Lifeboat Foundation

Half a mile-deep lab is shielded with 100 tons of steel.

A gold mine located over half a mile (one km) underground in Victoria, Australia, has been converted into the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory to study dark matter, a press release from Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) said.

Scientists believe that dark matter, the invisible substance largely unknown to mankind, makes up 85 percent of our universe’s mass. To know more about it, scientists have been building dark matter detectors, and one of the “most sensitive” detectors delivered some significant results last month.

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Realize that today’s AI is not able to “think” in any fashion on par with human thinking. When you interact with Alexa or Siri, the conversational capacities might seem akin to human capacities, but the reality is that it is computational and lacks human cognition. The latest era of AI has made extensive use of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), which leverage computational pattern matching. This has led to AI systems that have the appearance of human-like proclivities. Meanwhile, there isn’t any AI today that has a semblance of common sense and nor has any of the cognitive wonderment of robust human thinking.

ML/DL is a form of computational pattern matching.

AI Asymmetry is getting larger and worsening, particularly via the advent of fully autonomous systems, and for which society needs to be aware of and considering devising remedies such as arming more with AI to essentially fight fire with fire.

Continue reading “AI Ethics Wary About Worsening Of AI Asymmetry Amid Humans Getting The Short End Of The Stick” »

Quantum Information Science / Quantum Computing (QIS / QC) continues to make substantial progress into 2023 with commercial applications coming where difficult practical problems can be solved significantly faster using QC (quantum advantage) and QC solving seemingly impossible problems and test cases (not practical problems) that for classical computers such as supercomputers would take thousands of years or beyond classical computing capabilities (quantum supremacy). Often the two terms are interchanged. Claims of quantum advantage or quantum supremacy, at times, are able to be challenged through new algorithms on classical computers.

The potential is for hybrid systems with quantum computers and classical computers such as supercomputers (and perhaps analog computing in the future) could operate in the thousands and potentially millions of times faster in lending more understanding into intractable challenges and problems. Imagine the possibilities and the implications for the benefit of Earth’s ecosystems and humankind significantly impacting in dozens of areas of computational science such as big data analytics, weather forecasting, aerospace and novel transportation engineering, novel new energy paradigms such as renewable energy, healthcare and drug discovery, omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomic), economics, AI, large-scale simulations, financial services, new materials, optimization challenges, … endless.

The stakes are so high in competitive and strategic advantage that top corporations and governments are investing in and working with QIS / QC. (See my Forbes article: Government Deep Tech 2022 Top Funding Focus Explainable AI, Photonics, Quantum—they (BDC Deep Tech Fund) invested in QC company Xanadu). For the US, in 2018, there is the USD $1.2 billion National Quantum Initiative Act and related U.S. Department of Energy providing USD $625 million over five years for five quantum information research hubs led by national laboratories: Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermi, Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge. In August 2022, the US CHIPS and Science Act providing hundreds of millions in funding as well. Coverage includes: accelerating the discovery of quantum applications; growing a diverse and domestic quantum workforce; development of critical infrastructure and standardization of cutting-edge R&D.

Painting playgrounds blue to reflect visual and infrared sunlight to reduce surface temperatures to fight the urban heat island effect.

Painting roofs white is seen as a way to reduce surface and building interior temperatures. Using blue paint adds infrared reflectivity.

Artificial intelligence has produced creepy images of what it thinks humans will look like in the metaverse.

Craiyon AI, a popular text-to-image system, created several different pictures of what people might look like if humans all join the metaverse. Each has an augmented reality headset merged with their face.

A number of tech companies, including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, are pouring billions of dollars to create virtual worlds where people will be able to shop, work and be entertained.

Fitness applications are progressively using AI to control their offerings by supplying AI-based workout analysis, integrating technologies computer vision, synthetic data, and natural language processing techniques.

Capacitors are energy storage devices—consisting of two electrodes and an electrolyte—that are capable of rapid charging and discharging because of charge adsorption and desorption properties at the electrode-electrolyte interface. Because capacitors’ energy storage does not involve chemical reactions, their storage capacity is lower than that of lithium-ion batteries, but they are useful for power leveling for renewable energy that requires repeated charging at high currents, regenerative braking energy for trains and electric or hybrid cars, as well as instantaneous voltage drop compensation devices that prevent equipment failure due to lightning strikes. They are also expected to be used to store energy for wearable devices in the near future.

Most capacitors use a liquid electrolyte with a low boiling point, which can only be used at temperatures below 80℃. Ceramic capacitors that use solid inorganic materials as a dielectric can be used at temperatures above 80℃, but their storage capacity is much lower than liquid electrolyte capacitors, which limits their use to electronic circuits.

To increase the energy storage of capacitors, it is necessary to have a large contact area at the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte. Making a large contact area is difficult using solid electrolytes; so, the creation of a capacitor with high storage capacity that can also operate at high temperatures has been desired for a long time.

SuperMii

SuperMii provides a variety of tools you may use to create your cartoon avatar. You can further download them to use as your profile images, for example, on your preferred social networking networks. It is one of the best Metaverse Avatar building tools to make better versions than Mark Zuckerberg.

The TARDIS is the iconic time machine and spacecraft from the popular sci-fi series Doctor Who. The TARDIS functions by folding space using technology that taps into higher dimensions. But is there any scientific basis for this?

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Continue reading “How Does the TARDIS Work?” »